The meaning of "does"

[specialk1975]

Whenever the prompt asks "Does the value of X exceed 14?
-Do you approach these type of questions the same way as "IS" questions? If the value for X (given stem 1) is x = 5 , is this a positive result and hence 1 by itself is correct? Or does X actually have to exceed 14.

-I just made this question up. I am just trying to get a handle on this type of question.

[cris]

In that case I belive stem 1 is by itself SUFF.

I think....not 100% sure though...

[specialk1975]

I know , this problem ticks me off. Stupid Semantics!

[StarDust845]

Does the value of X exceed 14?

I believe that if we CAN answer one way or other, the stmt(s) is sufficient.

But if we can't answer the question for e.g. 1 < x < 20. Then the stmt is not sufficient.

Calista.

[rajendrap471]

'Does' means 'Is' here. I am still not confident.

[Stuart@KaplanGMAT]

"Does" is definitely analagous to "is" in data sufficiency. Other similar words are "are", "were", "could", "can" and pretty much any form of the verb "to be".

We often call this the "yes/no" family of questions. In other words, the question can be answered with a "yes' or a "no". Sometime we can't pin it down and the answer could turn out to be either "yes" or "no".

For a statement to be sufficient in a yes/no question, it must result in either a definite yes or a definite no answer. If a statement results in a "maybe", "sometimes" or "not sure" answer, then it's insufficient.

Here's an example:

Is x > 2?

(1) x > 0

If all we know is that x is greater than 0, then two possible values for x are 1.5 and 50. Is 1.5 > 2? No. Is 50 > 2? Yes. Since the answer could be yes or no, statement (1) is insufficient.

(2) x < 1

If we know that x is less than 1, then every possible value of x will be less than 2. So, if x is less than 1, x is definitely NOT greater than 2. Since the answer is definitely no, statement (2) is sufficient.